Of course, they knew where Dawn was headed: Depot Street. They knew, and had outsmarted her, and now it was too late for her to run from them for they were upon her, the big fat-faced boy called Billy Beams, the long-limbed boy called Jay-Jay, another who wore a Cleveland Browns cap reversed on his head, whose jaws were stubbled. Someone shoved Dawn from behind at Billy Beams who laughed and shoved her back again; and suddenly they were upon her, too many to fight; she was pulled down, desperately scrambling to escape even as they grabbed her ankles, her legs, her arms and wrists, turning her over roughly onto her back so that she lay helpless, trying to kick free, thrashing. How quickly it had happened—she was down. They were calling her cunt—dirty cunt. They were calling her dyke. Her cries were hoarse sobs. She could not draw breath to shout or to scream. One of the boys squatted behind her gripping her wrists. Another gripped her ankles. Whooping and laughing they managed to unzip and pull down her corduroys—took time to unlace and pull off her sneakers—and to tear off her white cotton underwear, that fitted her tightly and left red marks on her upper thighs and at her waist. The sight of the thick springy pubic hair, that grew up onto her white-skinned lower belly, roused them to ecstatic whoops and yodels—Jesus! Look at that! What a pig! They were made to think of their mothers’ bodies perhaps, those bodies out of which they’d emerged as infants, and for this they must punish her.
Their clumsy hands snatched up twigs, rotted leaves, mud to rub into her face, into her hair, and between her legs. With special vehemence, between her legs. They had not taken time to remove her shirt and had now to content themselves with squeezing her breasts hard, and rubbing mud onto them—her breasts that were not large, and not soft, but hard and resilient like sponge rubber. Something about her body maddened them, she saw their faces, flushed and furious, murderous. The tall long-limbed boy wearing the reversed cap seized a broken tree limb of about twelve inches long, to shove up inside her, between her legs; the limb was soft-rotted, and began almost at once to break, though Dawn felt an excruciating pain and managed now to draw breath to scream.
“Dirty cunt! You like this. You know you like this.”
Billy Beams grunted seizing a concrete block in both hands, to hold above her, taunting her. Dawn stared up in terror knowing that if the concrete block slipped from his hands her skull would be crushed. Barely Dawn managed to beg—“No please, please don’t . . .”
Billy Beams let the concrete block fall—not onto Dawn’s head but onto the muddy ground beside her. His expression was one of disgust, rage.
“If you tell anybody you’re dead. Dirty cunt, you’d better not tell anybody, got it?—or you’re dead.”
Soon after the boys retreated. She heard them running away, and she heard their low guttural cries of laughter fading. And then there was silence and she was alone.
For a long time she lay unmoving on the ground. She saw that the sky far overhead was silver-cast, as if the sun had withdrawn and had become a pallid thin light. Her eyes flooded with moisture. The ground beneath her was damp, cold. She realized that she was shivering convulsively for her lower body was naked, and a terrible weakness suffused her limbs.
“Jesus. Help me . . .”
Where had Jesus gone? Had He retreated in disgust, like the boys?
She managed to sit up. Her head rang with pain, both her wrists ached and her right shoulder throbbed with pain as if it had been jerked out of its socket. Between her legs was a throbbing pain and a thin cold trickle of blood and so cautiously she moved, very cautiously pulling up her mud-streaked corduroys, wincing yet determined to regain some measure of composure in case she was seen, for of course she would be seen, only a hundred yards or so from Depot Street (where sparse traffic moved, visible through a stand of trees; yet no one on Depot Street would have seen Dawn, and the boys squatting above Dawn during the several minutes of the assault). She would abandon the torn underpants but she located her running shoes tossed a few feet away, and managed to put them on, and to tie the ties securely. Thinking I am all right. I am not bleeding hard. I will be all right. It is up to me.
Shakily she stood. She felt a rush of blood between her legs—but it was not the dark humid near-hemorrhage of menstrual blood, that so frightened and disgusted her every few weeks, but rather a thin chill trickle, a different sort of bleeding that was not so serious (she believed) and would stop soon. The sharp tree limb had scratched her—the soft inside of her vagina. But it was only superficial scratches, that would cease bleeding soon. She told herself this.
With wetted leaves she wiped at herself, down inside the corduroys, between her legs, awkwardly. She had been so anxious to pull on the trousers, that no one might see her part-naked. With wetted leaves she wiped at her face. Picked clumps of mud out of her hair. Assessing the situation with a measure of calm—Really I am all right. No one will know.
“Thank you, Jesus. For sparing me.”
It had been her own fault, she knew: taking the shortcut home.
She would make her way limping home through the railroad yard, to Depot Street. She would enter very cautiously at the rear of the house. If Edna Mae was in the kitchen, she could avoid the kitchen. That would be easy—Edna Mae might call out, “Who’s that?”—and Dawn would need to say only, “Who’d you think, Ma? Me”—and walk past the door and go upstairs. (Dawn no longer called her mother Maw-maw. Even the younger children no longer called Edna Mae this name.) If Anita or Noah were close by they would take little note of their sister. Mary Kay would not be home yet. Quickly Dawn would ascend to the second-floor bathroom and no one would be a witness to her shame—for Jesus would grant this small mercy, she believed.
YEH WE FUCKED HER. Dun-phy. Some of us did. She liked it fine.
Dirty cunt. Dyke. Told her we’d kill her if she told anyone but she wouldn’t tell anyone ’cause she liked it.
SHE DID NOT RETURN TO SCHOOL. Not the next day, or the next.
Not because she was sick or injured for (she was sure) she was not sick or injured.
Behind the 7-Eleven store she waited in the late afternoon. Beside the Dumpster.